“Big science and big history: From the big bang to us”
Professor David Christian
Director of Big History Institute
Macquarie University
Thursday 20 August 2015
University of Sydney Business School CBD campus, Level 17, 133 Castlereagh St., Sydney
Big History examines our past, explains our present, and imagines our future. It's a story about us. An idea that arose from a desire to go beyond specialized and self-contained fields of study to grasp history as a whole. This growing, multi-disciplinary approach is focused on high school students, yet designed for anyone seeking answers to the big questions about the history of our Universe.
The Big History Project is a joint effort between teachers, scholars, scientists, and their supporters to bring a multi-disciplinary approach to knowledge to lifelong learners around the world. www.bighistoryproject.com. David Christian is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, but since the 1980s he has become interested in World History on very large scales or Big History. In 1989, he began teaching courses on 'Big History', surveying the past on the largest possible scales, including those of biology and astronomy; and in 2004, he published the first text on ‘Big History; He was founding President of the newly formed International Big History Association, and a co-founder with Bill Gates of the Big History Project, a project that is building a free on-line high school syllabus in big history released in 2013. David Christian has given numerous talks and lectures on aspects of Russian, Inner Eurasian and world and Big History. In March 2011, he gave a talk on “13.7 billion years of history in 18 minutes” at the TED conference in Long Beach and he has given talks at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Big History. He also appears regularly in the media talking about Big History.